Review: Poke Fish

Poke.. poke…poke. Sounds simple enough right? Think again. There is a lot of water between the dark ocean floor and the crashing waves at the surface.

Poke Fish, developed by Menki Mobile, is basically a digital paddle-ball game. Your goal is to help a little benthic anglerfish, named Mr. Justin Fish, find his way up from the depths of the sea to enjoy himself on the sunny beaches above. Why? Who knows. Maybe have a few Mai Tais? Watch some college girls playing volley ball? Fly a kite? Or even test that theory of feeding seagulls Alka-Seltzer? Make it to the surface and see for yourself

You start off on the ocean floor, outside the house of Mr. Justin Fish. Then the vertical journey begins as you continue to poke this poor bastard over and over and over. Taking a vertical leap, with every poke.

There are treasure chests occasionally that Mr. Justin passes by, that you try and tap on quick enough for him to capture. Besides the distance in feet away from the ocean floor, you are also trying to collect the Starfish and Gold that are found in these treasure chests.

There are various other items that can be found in the treasure chests too. Such as the extremely helpful rocket pack, which sends Mr.Justin rocketing towards the surface, with helmet and goggles securely fastened. But not all items in the treasure chests are helpful. If he snags a bottle of GROG, he gets all topsy-turvy (drunk) and spins around and bounces off the walls, making it harder to poke him.

Besides the various treasure chest items, you will see random items in the background that have sunk to the depths of the sea. You’ll come across statues, cars, victims of the mob that are wearing concrete boots, and many other unique and humorous items. My personal favorite, is Osama Bin Laden.

Things get more and more difficult as you make your way to the surface. The higher you get, the faster Mr. Justin Fish falls. And then there is the dreaded octopus arm that slowly sticks out across the screen. If you do not manage to get Mr. Justin above the arm, then your screen size is cut down drastically. Dribbling him in a very short amount of space. And you will most likely lose, as it is very difficult to tap that quickly, without Mr. Justin Fish slipping past you, back down to the depths of the sea.

For those that enjoy those simple, addictive “how far can you get” games, then this is right up your alley. This game is also great for those that use games on your devices to help your youngster’s hand-eye coordination. I’ve got my toddler trying like heck to keep this fish moving. He has no concept of strategy or the goal of the game. Just knows, poke the fish to make him swim. And its pure smiles the whole time.

This is a “free” game and for that I’m giving it an above average rating of 6 out of 10, based on what the game is and meant to be. It is intended to be nothing more than a simple “how far can you get” game. I feel it was well built. It is yet to crash on me. Audio is consistent. Loads quickly. And “poking” is accurate. No frustrating moments yelling at my tablet “I POKED HIM! WTF!!!” I would have rated the game higher, except for the fact that when I tested this game on my DroidX phone, which has a very large screen, I felt the advertisement at the top of the screen ate up too much critical space. On a tablet, this isn’t an issue as the advertisement image is still the same small phone size. Then again, this is how the developer gets phone users to break down and purchase the game. All and all, it is a good time.